Passenger aircraft routinely fly non-stop routes that involve flights lasting over ten hours and/or occurring during late night hours when the passengers would normally be sleeping. As such, passengers frequently wish to sleep for short periods or extended portions of the flight. Generally, such aircraft are equipped at minimum with seats capable of some level reclining so as to accommodate passengers wishing to sleep. More luxurious “sleeper seats” may also be provided, which in some cases recline as far as to allow the passenger to reach a prone or nearly prone position, or in other instances may be converted through the rearranging and/or adding of components to form a bed-like horizontal sleeping surface. However, when compared to conventional seats having minimal reclining capability, these sleeper seats require more significant allotments of space aboard the aircraft due to the larger footprint of the “sleeper” configuration.
Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 1, aircraft seats 130 are traditionally arranged in rows 120 of seats 130 which face forward in the cabin, parallel to a longitudinal axis 140 of the aircraft. Rows 120 are usually divided into smaller lateral groups of seats 130 by one or more aisles 150 proceeding forward through the cabin. As a result, in many seating configurations, many passengers (e.g., in seats 130a, 130d, 130e, and 130h) do not have direct access to the aisle (such as may be necessary, for example, to visit the lavatory), but must cross in front of one or more adjacent passengers' seats in order to reach the aisle (e.g., a passenger in seat 130e must either cross in front of seat 130f or both of 130d and 130e to reach an aisle 150). Accordingly, in many standard seat configurations, it may be difficult for a passenger to access the aisle without disturbing one or more passengers seated closer to the aisle, especially if any of those passengers are occupying additional space by utilizing the sleeper configuration of their seats.
Alternative seating arrangements have been introduced in which seats are not all aligned parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. For example, the PCT published application WO2007124398 describes a so-called herringbone arrangement of seats. As shown in FIG. 1, in a herringbone arrangement, the axis of the seat 160 is shifted with respect to the axis 140 of the vehicle. Common rationale for utilizing the herringbone arrangement to improve passengers' comfort include that the herringbone arrangement can provide space for large sleeper seats and that the herringbone arrangement can allow individual passengers to egress from their own seats to the aisle without disturbing another passenger. Even so, because sleeper seats generally require more space than conventional seats, new or modified seating arrangements are desirable to remedy limitations of known seating arrangements.